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Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Freedom fighter: Stephen Jakobi

Addressing a European Parliament hearing last month, Stephen Jakobi made an impassioned plea for the creation of a post of commissioner for civil liberties – to ease the burden of what he describes as Commissioner António Vitorino’s “schizophrenic role”.

“How,” Jakobi demanded, “can one expect the commissioner for justice and home affairs to evenly balance the demands of asylum, refugees, freedom of movement, security from both terrorism and escalating crime with the demands of citizens’ fundamental rights for protection against injustice? Surely the time has now come to ensure that security will be the responsibility of a commissioner for civil liberties. Twin tracks require twin commissioners.”

Powerful stuff, indeed, from the 68-year-old who, in 1994, launched FTA “to help EU citizens who are accused of a crime, in a country other than their own, to assert their rights to due administration of justice”.

The catalyst for the body’s creation came from the widespread public outrage and concern after the arrest and incarceration of UK citizens Karen Smith, 18, and 17-year-old Patricia Cahill, in Thailand in 1990. Accused of smuggling 30 kilos of heroin, the pair were tried without proper legal representation, and sentenced to 25 and 17 years in jail respectively.

In taking up the campaign for the women, and eventually securing their release in 1993, Jakobi drew on his many years of legal experience, gained first as a partner in a London firm from 1965-1990, which he joined six years after graduating in law at Cambridge, then as senior partner and litigation specialist in his own firm from 1990-1993.

Although centred on the legal inadequacies in Thailand, Smith and Cahill’s case opened Jakobi’s eyes to the injustices that can be inflicted upon strangers in a strange land, even within the EU: “First, innocent people don’t belong in prison,” he told European Voice. “Second, nobody was helping the innocent if they were abroad. Lawyers weren’t being found for them in countries that didn’t have legal aid, and foreign offices weren’t doing a bloody thing to help them. That is really what started it all off.”

As well as its director, the London-based FTA has two full-time staff and a host of volunteers. Its most recent high-profile case concerned the Greek judicial system. Fourteen EU citizens – 12 British and two Dutch – were arrested on charges of spying in November 2001, while attending an air show at a military complex in the southern town of Kalamata. The ‘plane-spotters’ were alleged to have taken photographs of the aircraft for “intelligence purposes”.

Thirteen finally had their convictions quashed in November last year, and have since received guarantees that €177,000 owed to them in bail refunds will be paid.

The 14th, Briton Mick Keane, abandoned his appeal on health grounds, so was found guilty of aiding and abetting, and given a one-year suspended jail sentence. On that matter, the FTA director is blunt: “He took bad advice – and it wasn’t ours.”

“The trial was a model of incompetence,” adds Jakobi. “It was even adjourned for one day, because all the judges were out on strike. If you are going to have your judicial system run along those lines, what sort of justice are people going to get?

“No European citizen outside Greece has any respect for Greek justice, and much practical work on raising the judicial standards of it and other countries must be done before the mutual confidence upon which all else depends can be established,” he insisted.

But he has even more to say on the subject: “The very young judges that we tend to get across the continental system are often responsible for starting big foul-ups. What happens is that somebody makes a stupid decision, somebody else feels they have to show solidarity, then you get a whole gaggle of judges trying to pretend that nothing has gone wrong. And when you realize that many judges get paid only €10,000 per year, the ancient adage of ‘pay peanuts and you get monkeys’ springs to mind.” Ouch.

So let us assume the Greeks are not exactly huge Jakobi fans, then. But what do Jakobi’s contemporaries think of his work?

Tony Bunyan is editor of civil rights group Statewatch, founded in 1991. Bunyan, who was nominated for an EV50 award in 2001, has worked closely with the FTA chief in recent years. A non-profit-making voluntary group, Statewatch exists to “encourage the publication of investigative journalism and critical research in the fields of the state, civil liberties and openness”.

He gave this, somewhat guarded, opinion of Jakobi’s latest objective: “While I am in no way opposed to the creation of a civil rights commissioner,” he said, “my instinct is not to ‘hive off’ the responsibility for justice that the EU owes to all citizens. Stephen, to be fair though, is not just campaigning for a new commissioner, but for equal rights to justice for all EU citizens.”

Some have been less ambiguous. The FTA was recently bombarded with hate mail after its leader voiced the uneqivocal opinion that the 350 suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members being held by the US in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay deserved a fair hearing.

As the world watched planeloads of prisoners being flown into the camp, Jakobi warned that American justice would be “forever judged on the treatment of these helpless detainees.” In the climate of the post-11 September 2001 atrocities, that took courage.

But Jakobi is nothing if not tough. Long-time friend Richard Howitt MEP, who supported the campaign to free the plane-spotters, is only too aware of Jakobi’s determination: “He is one of the most persistent, clawing, and effective advocates for justice in Europe, and he is also part of a very rare breed in the UK, a man who understands the importance of the European Union in dealing with justice and home affairs issues.”

Adds Howitt: “He is never short of a word or five – beneath the veneer of a highly professional lawyer lies an operator who is equally astute in manipulating the world of politics and the media.”

The MEP also points out that it was something of a struggle for Jakobi to reach the Bar in the first place, as his route was almost thwarted by family responsibilities.

“I’d wanted to be a lawyer ever since I did national service,” confirms the FTA chief. “I got a taste for it when I experienced a court martial and felt extremely concerned for the defendant.”

But the would-be lawyer also had the expectations of his parents to be concerned about.

“Law was not a family tradition at all – it was the 1950s, a time when a young man traditionally took over the family business.” In Jakobi’s case this was “one of the world’s largest aluminium manufacturing firms at the time”.

“I made a deal with my father. I went to read law at Cambridge, then worked for another metal firm where they didn’t know the family name or business, so I could succeed or fail on my own terms.

“I worked my way up as a market research executive and, just as I was about ready to join the family business, it was taken over by ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries]. I was free!”

Jakobi was by then already 30 years old and married to Sally, (a Jungian analyst, with whom he has a son, Nicholas, 33, and a daughter Francesca, 30).

“With great trepidation, and Sally’s support, I made my move to become a lawyer.”

Since then, one challenge has followed another. Alongside his campaign for a new commissioner, Jakobi is pushing hard for ‘Eurobail’ – a provisional liberty system to counteract what he believes are the implications of the European Arrest Warrant, due to come into force on 1 January 2004.

The European Commission is likely to extensively discuss Jakobi’s Eurobail proposal in a Green Paper, due out in July, and he is cautiously optimistic that his brainchild will see the light of day.

Work aside, the cruise boat captain of some 25 years loves his time off: “When we can get away – we always take August off – we potter around in our boat, taking it one or six days at a time.”

The campaigner also adores spaghetti westerns, and is a heavyweight science fiction/fantasy fan.

And as for his retirement? “The inauguration of a civil rights commissioner, or the introduction of Eurobail, would be the crowning glory of my career, no question. I might consider retirement then – but there is still so much to do.”

And if he’d chosen a career in aluminium over advocacy, all that time ago?